According to a climate market map of India and Southeast Asia (SEA) authored by Hemant Mohapatra, Partner at Lightspeed, while urgency and adherence vary across the SEA region, Singapore seems to be “well ahead” when it comes to the role of businesses in curbing the impact of climate change.
There are several examples, including SGX’s carbon accounting mandate for listed companies which threatened a delisting for those who do not adhere to it by 2024.
But Mohapatra wrote that the “most exciting development” in the role of businesses in tackling the impact of climate change is the shifting of talent from “not green” to “green” job options.
“Employees are increasingly acquiring green skills and transitioning into green and greening jobs, resulting in positive net transitions into these jobs. Younger generations are the largest sources of incoming talent into green careers across the world, with millennials leading the charge,” he detailed.
“Companies such as terra.do are helping accelerate this shift. While this volume of talent entering climate-related
roles are still too low to have a transformative impact by itself; we are encouraged by these shifts.”
Also Read: Beyond buzzwords: How climate tech startups can create an impact in green recovery
In addition to the trends related to talents and jobs, Lightspeed also noted down the spectrum of companies in SEA and India that are solving the challenges of climate change. The firm noted that these companies can be divided into four major categories:
– Companies that measure and report individual or institutional carbon or GHG footprint
– Companies that reduce other businesses’ footprint through operational or efficiency-related changes
– Companies that replace businesses’ current footprint with greener options
– Companies that offsett whatever remains via directly sequestering carbon or buying credits for it
via a marketplace that does sequestration on the clients’ behalf.
“Given how early the entire climate change category is, there are still a lot of misconceptions around what is needed, what is urgent, and what is sold as a product vs as a service. We attempt to simplify some of this,” Mohapatra wrote.
He also added how, having been evaluating climate investments in India since 2019, Lightspeed saw the exercise as “both sobering and alarming”.
Capitalism is part of our job profile, so it hasn’t been easy to come to terms with the role we, as venture capitalists, might have played in damaging our world. Large amounts of venture and entrepreneurial resources have gone to help serve more targeted advertisements to drive overconsumption of things — clothes, gadgets, household items — that are themselves built to last only a few years by design,” he concluded.
The full report is available here.
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